


Try to Freeze Time

by thepartyresponsible



Series: Learn from the Wreck [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pining, Prequel, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:09:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: The circus has a way of evening people out. Everyone looks the same when the lights center on the stage. The whole audience, just blank shadows, staring in. Everyone looks like nothing.Someone like this, though. Someone likehim. They’ll throw off that nothing before they get back to whatever pampered bed they crawled out of. Everyone else stays nothing, but, for people like that, it’s just a temporary state.Clint doesn’t mean to watch him. It’s just that he keeps catching Clint’s eye.





	Try to Freeze Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mythaeology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythaeology/gifts).



                Clint doesn’t mean to watch him all night. He’s not some kind of creep, like the men who hang around the dancers after the shows, hoping they’re desperate for extra cash. He’s not like that. For one, he doesn’t have any extra cash. And if he did, it wouldn’t be enough to buy one spare second of this guy’s time.

                He can tell, from fifty yards out, that this guy doesn’t belong here. Clint watches him walk up with the rest of the crowd, hands in the pockets of his jeans, t-shirt stained with engine grease, and he’d fit in, maybe, but his shoes are shined so damn bright they flash light right into Clint’s eyes.

                Those shoes’ll be dirty by morning. Hell, they’ll be dirty by _sundown_ with all the dust in the air.

                The circus has a way of evening people out. Everyone looks the same when the lights center on the stage. The whole audience, just blank shadows, staring in. Everyone looks like nothing.

                Someone like _this_ , though. Someone like _him_. They’ll throw off that nothing before they get back to whatever pampered bed they crawled out of. Everyone else stays nothing, but, for people like that, it’s just a temporary state.

                Clint doesn’t mean to watch him. It’s just that he keeps catching Clint’s eye.

                He wins the games he isn’t supposed to, loses all the ones that no one’s bothered to rig. He flirts outrageously with everyone who looks his way, but he keeps a neat circle of space around him, walks away from every conversation that starts to bend a little too friendly.

                He doesn’t seem like he’s here for the show. He doesn’t seem like he’s really here at all. Clint watches him step away from everything, phone in hand, eyes rolling heavenward and mouth cutting down into a mean, angry frown as he takes a call out in the mostly empty field they’re using for overflow parking.

                Clint watches him dissect his phone afterwards, throw away the pieces. He hands his wallet to the first kid that passes by, and Clint’s staring, trying to decide if he should intervene, but then the kid just scampers off, wallet in hand, and the guy wanders back toward the circus like it was never his wallet to begin with.

                Clint knows what desperate looks like. And he knows what boredom looks like. It’s an odd mixture, but he’s familiar enough with its components to recognize them.

                “Gonna stay for the show?” Clint asks, when he finally decides to stop staring and just go talk to him.

                The man considers him for a second. He’s younger than Clint thought. He’s probably only a year or two older than Clint. Nineteen, then. Maybe twenty.

                “I’m gonna stay for my whole damn life,” the man tells him, smile coming out crooked and amused, maybe a little sad.

                “That right?” Clint almost forgets to bend his tone upwards into a question. He’s busy trying to piece him apart, get a read on what’s going on in his head.

                He doesn’t _belong_ here. Clint doesn’t want him to leave.

                “Sure,” the man says, with a shrug. “You guys hiring? I’ve got all kinds of references. Only a few of which are falsified, and, if you can pick out which ones, maybe _I’ll_ hire _you_.”

                “Not for sale,” Clint says, as a hedge. As a test, maybe. You never can tell about people with money. Something goes wrong in their heads, sometimes. They start seeing price tags where they’re meant to see human beings.

                The man grimaces. “Everything’s for sale.” He says it like someone who’s been taught to say it. Which is fine. Clint can work with that, so long as he doesn’t _believe_ it.

                “You still want to be here after the show,” Clint says, “come find me.”

                He blinks and tips his head to the side, rocks back on his heels and then forward on his toes. “Do I get a name?”

                “Just ask for Hawkeye,” Clint says, as he turns to go. “Someone’ll show you.”

 

 

 

                He’s not sure if he expects to see him again or not. He’s not _surprised_ , exactly, when he shows up after the show, loose around the edges like maybe he found someone to share a flask with him in the meantime. But there’s a sort of shift in Clint’s head, a narrowing of possibilities.

                “Hey,” the man says, smiling. “Bow and arrow, huh?”

                “Yeah,” Clint says. He’s not embarrassed about it. He’s a little embarrassed about the costume, but he’d wear dumber things if it meant he got to shoot. Hell, he’d stand in front of the whole crowd naked if he had to. Whatever his dignity is worth, it’s not worth his bow.

                “Pretty impressive.” He’s just standing there, hands in his pockets, looking at Clint in a way Clint almost recognizes. He _would_ recognize it, if it were just a bit less honest, maybe a bit more ashamed.

                “You know,” Clint says, “I’m not gonna tell you that it’s a stupid idea, running away to join the circus. I did it. It worked out okay for me. But you seem like maybe you’ve got different prospects than I did.”

                It’s not a bad life. It isn’t. Clint’s got Barney, and he’s got Trickshot and Jacques, and, sure, there are people who piss him off, but there are more that don’t. And it’s safer now than it used to be. He’s grown into his shoulders, grown into his feet and his fists. He’s big enough now that people mostly leave him alone.

                But it’s not the life he would’ve run to, if he weren’t being chased by something worse.

                The man rolls his pretty doe-brown eyes and flips Clint off. “Let’s not talk about my _prospects_ , okay? Just show me how to join up. You guys got some kinda motley HR? Do I have to recite my resume while hanging from my toes? What’s the process?”

                Clint shakes his head. He shouldn’t encourage this. He’s going to do it anyway. “Sure,” he says, standing up. “I’ll show you who to talk to.”

 

 

 

                His name is Tony, Clint learns later, and there’s nowhere for him to stay, so he’s crawling in with Clint. “Hey,” Tony says, into his neck. “Maybe I read this wrong, but.”

                He settles a hand low on Clint’s belly, almost at the waistband of his sweatpants, and Clint tenses up. Can’t help it. It’s not that he doesn’t want it. At least, it’s not that he _couldn’t_ want it, if he gave himself time to think about it, but it’s too sudden. Tony moves too fast.

                Clint’s only just decided that Tony’s not any kind of threat to him, and Tony’s somehow made it all the way to the part where he wants to sleep with him. Or maybe Tony didn’t do any kind of threat assessment at all. Maybe that’s not a thing they teach nice, pretty, rich boys like him.

                “Oh,” Tony says. The hand withdraws. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he mutters, “Sorry,” as he turns away, puts his back to Clint.

                Clint feels like an asshole. He feels awkward and stupid, too old to be this young, too experienced to be this _shy_. It’s just that he’s only ever slept with other circus people. He doesn’t fuck around with strangers; he doesn’t trust himself with variables he doesn’t know. He’s never even kissed someone he just met, and Tony damn near slid his hand down Clint’s pants.

                In a year or three, maybe that wouldn’t matter. Maybe Clint would’ve shaken loose from that last, lingering teenage skittishness. But right now, his heart’s hammering in his throat like it’s his first night in front of a crowd all over again.

                He doesn’t want Tony to touch him, not right now. But he doesn’t want to eliminate the possibility that Tony will try again in the future.

                He rolls over, curls carefully around Tony so that they’re separated by an inch or so of space. Close enough to feel the warmth of each other’s bodies, not so close that they’ll feel each other breathe.

                “’s alright,” Clint says. Because it is. It’s _fine_. If he didn’t want Tony in his bed, he’d have shoved him onto the floor.

                “You want…?” Tony starts, craning his neck around, squinting in the dark like Clint’s got some kind of answer written across his face.

                Clint has no idea what he wants.

                “Go to sleep, Tony,” he says. “Got a lot of work to do in the morning.”

                “Sure,” Tony says, slowly, and then lays back down.

                Clint wonders where Tony was, the last time he laid down to sleep. He wonders where Tony woke up this morning. He wonders what the hell could be so bad that it’d chase someone in dress shoes all the way to the circus, push him to give away his wallet to some random kid, to sign up to do all the shit that the mechanics didn’t want to, to share a bed with someone like him.

                It’s not his place to wonder, probably. He’s got no right to pry.

                Still, he’d like to know anyway, just so he could pin down some kind of timeline, put an end-date to Tony’s time here.

 

 

 

                By the end of the first week, half the circus is in love with Tony. Clint doesn’t blame them. There’s a lightness to Tony that no one else really has. He has an easy, careless charm, a sort of low-stakes approach to life, like no one and nothing can hurt him. There’s a lot that sparkles in the circus, all kinds of cut glass and sequins happy to reflect light, but there’s not much that shines.

                People keep roping Tony into helping with all sorts of things. Clint thinks the aerialists and the fire dancers must be in some kind of competition, what with sudden, collective, and catastrophic failure of everything they own that’s electric. 

                Not everyone likes Tony, though. Not everyone’s interested in anything flashy or bright.

                One of the mechanics finds Clint practicing alone, ten days into Tony’s stay, and he just watches for half an hour, waits until Clint’s arms are starting to show strain before he decides to talk.

                 “Your boy,” he says. “He’s a hard worker.” He gives Clint a flat look, like that’s some kind of problem. Like Clint’s personally responsible for it.

                “Not my boy,” Clint says, evenly. It’s none of his business if Tony’s putting them out of work. If they can’t earn their place, they can’t keep it. Clint’s been earning his way since he was twelve years old. He’s got pity for a thirty-something who can’t keep up, but the circus doesn’t keep anyone out of mercy.

                “Didn’t think he’d know how to work at all,” the man says. “Hands like that. _Face_ like that.”

                Clint breathes out. He weighs things in his head, and then he sets his bow down. “There something wrong with his face?”

                He gets an ugly smile back. “Thought he wasn’t your boy.”

                The circus takes all kinds. There’s a blessing in that, and a warning. Some people don’t fit in society, and that’s society’s fault, for not being tolerant enough or patient enough or forgiving enough, for pitching a kid aside as trash before he had a chance to be anything else. And then, sometimes, it’s not society’s fault. Sometimes, society’s right.

                “He’s not here forever,” Clint says. “Probably best to just wait it out.”                                                     

                The mechanic shrugs. He’s got the kind of grin that makes Clint think of cartoon wolves, twisted up and hungry, handmade to scare children. But he’s not a child. And even when he was, he wasn’t the kind that scared easy.

                “Never been very patient,” the man says.

                Clint steadies himself, thinks about the moment after he releases the bowstring, when it’s out of his hands, when all he has to do is wait for physics to handle the hit for him. He takes a step forward, doesn’t let any part of him shake. “Never too late to learn new things.”

 

 

 

                Tony gets paid in cash, sometimes, but mostly he seems happy to take his wages in whatever kind of alcohol is on offer. He’s learned to stay out late at night, rinse his mouth out with something minty before he comes back to crash out next to Clint. The first night he showed up smelling like whiskey, he’d ended up thrown out on his ass, and Clint damn near had a panic attack.

                So Tony acquired mouthwash, changed his behavior to suit Clint’s weaknesses. And the whiskey-mint smell wasn’t anything, wasn’t attached to any of the memories that made Clint think of nights spent belly-down under his bed, trying to make himself so small he stopped existing entirely.

                Now, whiskey-mint-sweat just smells nice, smells like sleep.

                Clint’s usually already out when Tony stumbles into bed, but he’s awake this time when Tony ditches his shirt and jeans, crawls in next to him, hums a sleepy hello against the skin of Clint’s neck that raises goosebumps all down his arms.

                “Hey,” Clint says, whispering it even though Barney hasn’t been in his bed for weeks, keeps rotating between the Contreras sisters like that’s not the sort of thing that’s gotten better men killed.

                Barney’s bed is empty, and Tony could be in it. But he’s not. He’s been in Clint’s, every damn night.

                “Someone said you were fighting,” Tony says. He wraps an arm around Clint’s waist, hooks an ankle over one of Clint’s. It’s too hot to sleep so close together, but Clint doesn’t pull away. “I figured they must’ve been talking about your brother.”

                Of the two of them, Barney’s definitely the more regular brawler. But the Barton brothers have developed a certain reputation over the years, and Clint’s done his share of earning it.

                “Must’ve been,” Clint says.

                Tony slides his hand over Clint’s belly, and Clint catches his breath. He’s so distracted by the slow, clever drag of Tony’s fingertips across his stomach that he doesn’t track their likely trajectory until Tony’s suddenly running his fingers over his busted knuckles.

                “Wanna try again?” Tony sounds curious, maybe a little skeptical. He doesn’t sound surprised. Clint wonders how much of the story he’s already put together.

                People talk to Tony. Well, he’s easy to talk to.

                “Guy’s an asshole.” Clint closes his eyes and forces his shoulders to relax, tries to make it seem like he’s on the edge of sleep. It’s not quite playing dead, but he’ll grant that it’s still not the bravest thing he’s ever done.

                Tony sighs, and it’s so heavy with doubt that Clint almost flinches. There’s a long moment of stillness and then Tony pushes himself up, hand slipping down Clint’s ribs to push into the bed by his side. He leans over Clint, bracketing his body, and Clint’s eyes open of their own volition.

                Tony stares down at him, barely visible in the thin, watery light. Clint looks back up at him, a little nervous, a little transfixed.

                Tony leans down slow, and there’s plenty of time to pull back, get out of his way. Clint has no one to blame but himself, because, idiot that he is, he meets Tony halfway.

                Tony’s mouth is warm and soft against his own, fits so perfectly against his that Clint damn near melts into him. There’s a flash of tongue, and Clint makes an encouraging nose in the back of his throat, puts a careful hand in Tony’s hair.

                But then Tony’s pulling back, face furrowing up, because he must’ve felt what he couldn’t see.

                Hell, the cut’s still fresh. Maybe he tasted it.

                Tony rubs a gentle thumb over Clint’s split lip. “He hit you, huh?” There’s something in Tony’s tone, some old unhappiness, the kind of hurt that finds a home, roots deep. The whole circus loves Tony because he shines, and here’s Clint, making him go dark.

                “Sure,” Clint says, with a shrug. “It was a fight, Tony. I hit him, too.”

                After a moment, Tony nods. He presses a kiss to Clint’s cheek and then lays back down, wraps his arms around Clint. They don’t say anything else.

               

 

 

                Two days later, that same mechanic gets taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Clint doesn’t see it happen, but one of the acrobats finds him afterwards. “He was breathing again when they loaded him up,” she tells him, “but the shock knocked him out. I _heard_ it.”

                Tony wasn’t anywhere nearby when it happened. Clint honestly can’t call whether it was an accident or not. He catches Tony’s gaze the next time he sees him, and Tony looks back, a little wide-eyed, a bit unsteady, but that could mean anything.

                Later, Tony finds him right before he’s about to go on, drags him in with two hands curled in his costume, and kisses him, soft and careful. “Have fun,” he says, forehead resting against Clint’s. His eyes drop to stare right at the bruising around Clint’s mouth, almost fully hidden under borrowed stage makeup.

                “Don’t kill anyone,” Clint says, just to test it out.

                Tony grins at him, sharp and feral. _Angry_ , Clint realizes. Angry, on his behalf. “Don’t get in any more fights,” Tony says.

                Clint shakes his head. He tugs Tony back in for another kiss, and it’s less soft, less careful. It’s nice, he thinks, that Tony’s more careful with him than he is with himself. There’s some novelty to that.

                “Go,” Tony says, laughing. He shoves Clint forward, and Clint cranes his neck, stumbles out into the lights, still staring back over his shoulder for one last glimpse of his sunshine grin.

 

 

 

                Tony _flirts_. Like it’s a hobby, or a plan. He flirts with Clint like it’s a game they’re playing, and Clint fumbles the pass damn near every time. The people he’s been with, it’s always been more a matter of convenience than genuine interest, and he’s been fine with that. Nobody’s pursuing anyone; they just kind of fall together for a while. It’s comfortable, and simple.

                But Tony, he keeps tagging after Clint like he’s some kind of prize. He kisses him, full on the mouth when they’re alone, and little dumb pecks on his cheek or forehead or nose when they’re around other people. Clint will settle in to eat, and Tony will appear beside him, hook their ankles together under the table and make himself at home in whatever conversation Clint was caught in.

                And then, once, when they’re between cities, Tony takes him to a nearby park in a borrowed truck, and they spend an hour like normal people, drinking cheap wine and eating sandwiches that one of the moms must’ve helped Tony make.

                Clint’s explaining something about Iowa, and the wine and the talk of home have teamed up to resurrect the worst of his accent. Tony grins at him like he’s some kind of marvel.

                “Your ability to swallow vowels,” Tony says, “is absolutely mesmerizing.”

                Clint huffs out a skeptical breath, rolls his eyes even while he tries to bite back a smile. “Oh, sure,” he says. “I’m sure _vowels_ is really what you’re thinking about me swallowing.”

                Tony goes still for a second, eyes widening, and Clint think he’s ruined things, somehow, but then Tony’s just laughing, loud and carrying, bright and sweet like sunrise. “Hey,” Tony says, smile crooking up a little wicked, “I thought you were shy.”

                Clint shrugs. He holds up a hand, teeters it back and forth. “Careful,” he says, after a moment. “Not shy.”

                “Reserved,” Tony tries. “Reticent.”

                “Sure,” Clint says, although he wouldn’t want to define that last one in front of a crowd. “Trying not to get too attached,” he adds, before he can stop himself.

                Tony’s eyebrows flick upwards. “Oh, yeah? There a reason for that?”

                The reason is that Clint’s not an idiot. No one who looks at Tony thinks he’s going to stick around for long. Even sitting there, in clothes he’s mostly borrowed from Clint or traded from other people, he looks like he’s just visiting. Like a tourist, like a researcher.

                “You know,” Tony says, nudging Clint’s shoe with his own, “you make the same face, every time you worry about something.” He mock-scowls and points at his face. “This one.”

                “C’mon, Tony,” Clint says, “how much longer do you really think you’ll be here?”

                “As long as I can,” Tony says. He looks away, studies the river below them, and finishes his wine. He’s already downed half the bottle, and Clint’s still on his first glass. “There’s a chance no one’ll even notice I’m gone until the fall semester starts up.”

                It’s late July. Tony’s been here since the last week in May. Clint notices the second Tony wanders out of his line of sight, and, if Tony stays out much past the time he normally gets to bed, Clint wakes up, disoriented and worried. Once or twice, he’s even gone looking for him.

                He can’t imagine someone losing Tony for an entire month and not _noticing_.

                “Anyone who wouldn’t miss you,” Clint says, “is a Goddamn idiot.”

                Tony tips his head toward him. He’s got that sad look again, all those old hurts, set loose right behind his eyes. Clint wishes he could reach into the heart of him and throttle all those demons he carries around, but they’re stuck in their separate skins, so he leans in and kisses him, instead.

                Tony smiles against his mouth. He tastes like the wine they’ve been drinking, tart and crisp and a little like apples. Clint doesn’t even like wine, but he licks his way into Tony’s mouth, chases the flavor, tries to memorize it, so he’ll always have this moment, in his head. So he’ll have this, even after Tony’s gone.  

 

 

 

                Over the next week or so, people stop breaking their own appliances as an excuse to get Tony alone. Clint knows it’s because everyone assumes they’re together. He doesn’t correct anyone. He’s not sure they’re wrong. Tony keeps orbiting around him, sleeps pressed against him every night, wanders up to him just to give him kisses and compliments, and Clint figures, maybe, they _are_ dating. Maybe that’s what this is.

                He doesn’t know. He has no idea what the hell they’re doing. And he knows he’s making a damn idiot out of himself, but he doesn’t want it to stop.

                It gets bad enough that Barney feels like he needs to intervene. Bestirred by brotherly concern, Barney tells Tony he needs to find somewhere else to sleep, and, when one of the clowns dutifully passes that information along to Clint, he stops practice early so he can go yell at his brother.

                “I’m not saying you gotta stop fucking him,” Barney says, hands up, pacifying, “I’m just saying don’t let some fucking tourist break your Goddamn heart.”

                “Real nice, Barney,” Clint says. “Thanks. Hey, how are the Contreras sisters doing?”

                Barney rolls his eyes. “They aren’t tourists,” he says. “And we’re not talking about me.” He has the grace to look a little ashamed of himself, but not anywhere near enough.

                Clint rolls his eyes. “Tony can sleep wherever the hell he wants,” he says. “It’s _my_ damn bed. If you’ve got a problem with who’s in it, you can talk to me about it.”

                Barney crosses his arms over his chest and glares at him. They haven’t really known how to talk to each other for the past few years. Ever since Clint hit that last growth spurt and started being able to look Barney directly in the eyes, things have been a little strained.

                It’s not that Clint doesn’t love his brother. And it’s not that Barney doesn’t love him back. There was a long, lonely stretch of years where all they had was each other. But need wears out, over time, and Clint’s not sure what’s left between them, other than memories they’d probably both like to forget.

                “Fine,” Barney says. He spits it out like he’s angry, but Clint knows what angry looks like on Barney, and it looks like a swift, sudden punch to the back of the head. This is something else. “Better start practicing your goodbye speech, little brother.”

                “Fuck off,” Clint says. He brushes past him, shoulder snagging against Barney’s just hard enough to show he means it, and then he sets off to find Tony.

 

 

 

                The whole circus thinks they’re fucking – _Barney_ thinks they’re fucking – but they aren’t. That’s Clint’s fault. His last shred of self-protection keeps him dodging Tony’s hands every time they dip down to the zipper on his jeans. And it’s _stupid_ , and masochistic, and he’s going to get blue balls if he keeps this up, but there’s something sweet about it, too.

                Tony will make out with him for hours, if Clint lets him. They’ll tumble into bed and press against each other, all mouths and hands, like they’re fifteen, like they’ve got all the damn time in the world.

                Clint’s learned, better than most, that if you don’t take opportunities when they’re given, you lose them. And there’s nothing special or admirable about passing on an opportunity like Tony. It just makes him an idiot.

                But there’s going to be enough to miss, when Tony goes. His lightning bolt smile, the magnet of his focus, the callouses on his hands and then soft skin of his lips. The way he’ll work so hard to make Clint laugh and then kiss him the second he starts, so he never even gets to hear it. He’ll even miss the miserable silences, the moodiness that settles over Tony like midnight striking at noon, the whiskey bottles he leaves in his wake, the way he never answers the question “You okay?” but just screws his face up and changes the subject, like even getting asked the question is some kind of disgrace.

                Clint’s going to be busy, missing all of that. He doesn’t know how the hell he’d manage it, if he had to miss the feel of Tony’s body, the taste of him in Clint’s mouth, the noises he makes, when he can’t stop himself from making them.

                So it stays almost ludicrously chaste between the two of them. They lose shirts, but never their jeans, and Tony closes his eyes and chews on his lip, but he never complains.

                Clint knows they’re building to something. He knows he could lean one way or the other, help things along, call them off. He hasn’t made up his mind, although he’s self-aware enough to acknowledge that he hasn’t exactly managed to resist the pull toward Tony yet.

                And then Alicia, who’s fourteen, breaks her arm trying a new trick, and someone comes around to ask Tony if he knows anything about setting bones.

                Because that’s who Tony is. That’s what people think about him. They think he can fix any damn thing, and they only think that because, so far, he’s been able to.

                “What,” Tony says, in disbelief. They’re staring down at Alicia, and her broken arm, and how she’s not even crying, just moving her lips like she’s reciting some kind of prayer. “She needs a doctor, holy shit.”

                “Tony,” Clint says. He closes his hand slowly around Tony’s wrist. He’s furious, for a second. He’s pissed at the people who brought them here, and he’s pissed at whoever thought it was a good idea to try to teach that trick to Alicia, and he’s even pissed at _Alicia_ , for missing the jump so spectacularly that he can see the edge of her bone, pushing against the skin.

                “Clint?” Tony’s staring at him, wide-eyed. He’s about to panic. Clint can see it on him. “What the hell is this? Where are her parents? She needs to go to a _hospital_. I can _see bone_.”

                “Not through the skin,” Clint says. “Could be okay.”

                “It _could be_ ,” Tony says, voice rising high and shrill in his throat, “ _okay_?”

                Clint swallows. “Tony,” he says, soft and a little lost.

                “Where are her _parents_?” Tony repeats, swinging his head around to glare at Monica, who’s got Alicia’s head in her lap and is carding her fingers carefully through her hair.

                “Not here,” Monica says, with a lifted chin and the kind of stare that can silence half the circus from fifty yards.

                Alicia showed up like Clint and Barney, but she showed up alone. She’s done well, anchored herself to people like Monica, who aren’t nice but who are fair, and endlessly loyal. It hasn’t been a problem that Alicia’s alone. Not really. Not until now.

                “Tony,” Clint says, “there are medics. It’ll be--”

                “I _drink_ with the medics!” Tony shakes his head, shoots another wild-eyed look at Alicia, who’s pale and pinched, weathering the pain with the kind of tolerance that gets trained into you.

                Tony swivels his head to stare at Clint. He takes a breath. His fingers knot around Clint’s for a second, and then he lets go, steps away. “Okay,” he says, “fuck this. I need to borrow a truck.”

 

 

 

                Tony comes back hours later, after the show, after everything’s reset for the next night. Clint’s been lying awake, waiting. He pushes himself up onto his elbows to stare at Tony in the doorway. There’s a new weight on Tony’s shoulders. Or maybe it’s just the resettling of an old one.

                “You up?” Tony toes his shoes off, strips his shirt, and drops everything on the floor by the bed.

                “Yeah,” Clint says. “How’s Alicia?”

                “Doped up,” Tony says with a shrug. “I dropped her at Monica’s, with all her pills. Should be alright.” He climbs in next to Clint, but he doesn’t touch him. After a moment, he reaches up and rubs at his face.

                “Sorry,” Clint says.

                Tony tips his head to the side so he can stare up at him. “For what?”

                Clint shrugs, waves a hand. What _isn’t_ he sorry for? He’s sorry that this happened. He’s sorry that Tony had to fix it. He’s sorry that Tony’s sad, and he’s sorry because he thinks he knows why.

                 He makes himself ask, even though he doesn’t want to. Even though all he wants is to lay back down and pretend it’s yesterday. “How’d you pay the doctors, Tony?”

                Tony sighs. “Kept a credit card,” he says. “For emergencies. Didn’t wanna use it, because—I mean, the circus is perfect. Even if he _is_ looking for me, how the fuck would he know to look here? But.”

                “But you used a credit card,” Clint says.

                “But I used a credit card,” Tony agrees. He’s quiet for a second and then makes a low, frustrated noise. “ _Fuck_.”

                Clint sits up. They haven’t talked about whatever Tony’s running from. They haven’t talked about who Tony is, or who might be looking for him, or why he’d want to run away. Clint never asked, and Tony never has any problem talking, so if he wasn’t talking about _this_ , Clint figured it wasn’t any of his damn business.

                Clint reaches over and lays his hand carefully on the side of Tony’s face. “Are you gonna be okay?” Tony’s eyes slide his way, and Clint forces himself to hold still. “When he finds you. You gonna be okay?”

                “Oh,” Tony blinks at him and then clears his throat. He sits up, and the bed isn’t big enough for it, really, so they’re practically in each other’s laps already. “Clint, it’s not like—it’ll be fine. I’ll be _fine_.”

                “Because,” Clint says, “if you want to go somewhere else, try a different circus, do something else.” He swallows, thinks about Barney, thinks about Jacques. And then he goes on anyway. “If you want,” he says, “I’d go with you.”

                Tony stares at him for a long moment, and then he hooks his hand around the back of Clint’s neck and tugs him in, kisses him so urgent and desperate that they end up sprawled out on the bed, Tony on top of him.

                “Fuck,” Tony says. He sounds _hurt_. “Goddamn it, Clint, I don’t want to leave you.”

                But he will. He doesn’t want to, but he will. Clint hears it, and he closes his eyes, pulls Tony closer so he doesn’t have to say anything.

                There’s no point in letting other people know when they’ve hurt you. Either they meant to, or they didn’t. And whatever their motivations, they can’t change what they’ve already done.

                Tony’s the sweetest thing Clint knows. The brightest smile, the fastest mind, the cleverest hands. Clint was never going to get to keep him. It was a stupid, childish thought, and, if Clint gets his heart broken over this, it’s not Tony’s fault. Tony never promised him a damn thing.

                “Hey,” Tony says, nosing along his jaw. “You okay?”

                They’ve learned not to ask each other that question. Clint doesn’t ask Tony, because Tony won’t ever answer it, and Tony doesn’t ask him, because Clint’s always some manner of okay. Clint can’t afford to be anything else.

                “Yeah,” Clint says. If he’s a little breathless, he can blame that on the fact that Tony’s got one leg nestled between both of Clint’s, won’t stop applying just the right kind of pressure. “Hey,” he says, when it seems like maybe Tony’s going pull back, get a look at his face, and ruin everything. “Hey, can we…?”

                He curls his hand around Tony’s wrist and then draws his hand down, slips his fingers just under the hem of his jeans.

                Tony catches a sharp breath. “Yeah?” He works his mouth down from Clint’s lips, to his jaw, to the sensitive skin of his throat. “You sure?”

                “Shit,” Clint says. He reaches down, flicks open the button on Tony’s jeans. “I’m very, very sure.”

                If you don’t take opportunities when they’re given, you lose them. And Clint’s not sure how much longer he’s going to have Tony, but, once he’s gone, he knows there won’t ever be anyone like him again.

 

 

 

                They get four days. And then, an hour or so before the show, when the sun is on its lazy way toward setting and Clint’s warming up, thinking about changing into his costume, Barney comes jogging up to him, looking legitimately apologetic for the first time in years.

                “Hey,” he says. A strange look passes between them, and Clint feels it, the first aching crack in his chest, and he knows, immediately, that they’re out of time. “Hope you’ve been practicing that goodbye speech,” Barney says. “Because some guys just showed up looking for Tony.”

                Clint goes, because he has to. Barney will cover for him, if he doesn’t make it back in time. He’ll be pissed about it, and Jacques will be pissed, and everyone will be pissed, but they’ll understand, too. Because it’s Tony. It’s Tony, and he’s leaving.

                Clint takes off at a run, and a half-dozen people direct him along the way, pointing or nodding or jerking their chins with sad, quiet smiles. Clint thinks, afterwards, that he probably didn’t need any of them. It’s harder to pick Tony out of the crowd now, but the men he’s with, they stand out even more than Tony did, when he first showed up. They’re wearing _suits_.

                Tony’s arguing with one of them, but not loudly. It’s perfunctory, like he knows he has to, but also knows he won’t win. The man stares at him like he’s just counting down seconds in his head. He looks like he couldn’t be more bored by the things coming out of Tony’s mouth, and Clint wants to fight him, just for that.

                The second guy, though. The second guy is clearly security, and is also clearly _good_ at it. His eyes settle on Clint when Clint’s still forty yards out, and he watches Clint approach for a long moment before he speaks.

                Clint’s too far away to hear what he says, but Tony and the man he’s talking to both turn to stare at him, and Clint realizes, in that second, that this is Tony’s father. He falters, almost tripping over himself. There’s several seconds where they’re all just staring, and then Tony’s dad visibly dismisses him, turns to Tony, and says something that makes Tony flush red and then pale out.

                Clint figures, with the way that security guy’s holding himself, he’s going to get one punch, at the most. He thinks it might be worth it.

                But before he can get to them, Tony holds a hand up, palm out, fingers spread. _Stop_ , he says, and Clint stops, immediately.

                He watches while Tony argues with his dad, watches when the man finally seems to give a little, hands something to Tony, and then Clint waits while Tony comes across the field, half-running to him.

                “Hey,” he says, when he gets close. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.”

                Clint swallows. It’s not a _surprise_. He doesn’t know why he feels this way. He knew it was coming. He’s just being stupid. It’s a habit of his. “Yeah,” he says, eyes going back to Tony’s dad. “Looks like you do.”

                “He’s such a prick,” Tony says, and there’s anger in his voice, and pain, but not enough to justify trying to box his dad in a field. Especially not when Clint can tell in a glance that it would just end with assault charges and a prison stint he’d hate. “Look, I don’t want—you know I want to stay. With you. You know I _would_ if---”

                “Sure,” Clint says. He nods. He does his best to look like he believes it. He feels like he’s watching this whole thing play out from behind a screen. This doesn’t feel real at all.

                Behind Tony, his dad is staring at Clint. His eyes start at Clint’s old, busted shoes and move up to his sweatpants and his stained tank top, and Clint was _warming up_ , wouldn’t usually wear this in public, but the truth is that even his best clothes aren’t much better.

                He’s never felt the kind of cheap he feels, standing there, talking to Tony in front of his dad, with that shiny Rolls Royce parked behind him. He’s never felt more like trash.

                He doesn’t want Tony to leave, but he needs, desperately, for this moment to be over.

                “Here,” Tony says. He shoves something into Clint’s hand. It’s paper, small but sturdy. A business card, maybe. Clint doesn’t look. He’s staring hard at Tony’s face, trying to memorize it. “Call me,” Tony says.

                There’s something brittle in Tony’s voice. There’s something brittle in his eyes.

                Clint wants to kiss him. It feels like the right moment for it. The sun is setting behind him, and he’s backlit, glowing with warm light. Tony’s eyes drop to Clint’s mouth, and Clint takes a breath, thinks: _Now, idiot. Do it now before he leaves you_.

                But neither one of them moves.

                Behind them, Tony’s dad loses patience. “ _Tony_ ,” he yells. “Let’s go.”

                Tony grimaces, and it’s not a flinch. He’s not _scared_. Clint thinks, if he looked scared, he’d fight that security guy, anyway, just for a chance to get to his dad. But Tony doesn’t look scared. He looks sad, resigned and worn out, pissed off and maybe embarrassed. Maybe ashamed.

                Clint folds his hand around the card in his hand. He makes himself say it, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Bye, Tony.”

                Tony stares at him. “ _Call_ me,” he says, urgently, and his hands flutter at his sides, like he wants to grab him, wants to hold on. But then he turns, and he heads back toward his dad.

                Clint looks down at the card in his hand so he doesn’t have to watch Tony leave. On the back, scrawled quickly in Tony’s jagged handwriting, it just says _Tony_ and then a phone number. When Clint flips it over to stare at the front, he realizes he’s holding Howard Stark’s business card.

                He’s holding Howard Stark’s business card, because he’s been sleeping with Howard Stark’s son.

                Tony is Tony Stark.

                Clint makes a low, horrified noise that mutates into a high, incredulous laugh. He’s spent most of the summer fooling around with _Tony Stark_.

                Jesus, no wonder Howard stared at him like he was a zoo animal. No wonder that security guy had looked at him with an equal mix of derision and sympathy, like he was just a sad joke with an entirely predictable punchline. Like he _was_ a punchline.

                Clint closes his hand around the card and looks up. Tony’s climbing into the back of that beautiful car. He looks back, just once, but looks away again before Clint can do something stupid, like wave, or laugh, or yell at him to stay.

                The car starts up and then starts driving away. Echoing off in the distance, Clint hears the first roaring applause of the show starting. He stays where he is, watches the car, watches Tony leave him.

                He swallows. He tells himself he hasn’t lost anything he ever deserved to have to begin with.

                He shoves the card in his pocket, and he knows he won’t ever call. But he’ll keep the card, anyway. As proof. Proof that, for two months, Tony Stark once thought he was worth his time.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by a partnership consisting of mythaeology's genius and my absolute inability to walk away from a prompt, even when my wips are in the double digits. 
> 
> The title is taken from "Cry for Judas" by The Mountain Goats. The series title is taken from "No Hell" by Cloud Cult. 
> 
> For fic updates about the sequel, follow me [on tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/).


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